- Opera in 2 acts
- Composer: Benjamin Britten
- Libretto: Myfanwy Piper, after Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig (1912)
- First performed: Aldeburgh Festival, UK, 16th June 1973, conducted by Steuart Bedford
Characters
| GUSTAV VON ASCHENBACH, a novelist | Tenor | Peter Pears |
| Traveller / Elderly fop / Old gondolier / Hotel manager / Hotel barber / Leader of the players / Voice of Dionysus | Baritone | John Shirley-Quirk |
| The Polish mother | Dancer | Deanne Bergsma |
| TADZIO, her son | Dancer | Robert Huguenin |
| Her two daughters | Dancers | Elisabeth Griffiths Melanie Phillips |
| JASCHIU, Tadzio’s friend | Dancer | Nicolas Kirby |
| Voice of Apollo | Countertenor | James Bowman |
| Hotel porter | Tenor | Thomas Edmonds |
| Boatman | Baritone | Michael Bauer |
| Hotel waiter | Baritone | Stuart Harling |
| Russian mother | Soprano | Alexandra Browning |
| Russian father | Bass | Michael Follis |
| German mother | Mezzo-soprano | Angela Vernon Bates |
| Strawberry seller | Soprano | Iris Saunders |
| A guide | Baritone | Robert Carpenter Turner |
| Lace seller | Soprano | Sheila Brand |
| Newspaper seller | Soprano | Anne Wilkens |
| Glassmaker | Tenor | Stephen James Adams |
| Strolling player | Tenor | Neville Williams |
| Strolling player | Mezzo-soprano | Penelope Mackay |
| English clerk | Baritone | Peter Leeming |
| Nurse-governess | Soprano | Anne Kenward |
| Travellers, workers, and dancers | Chorus |
Setting: Venice and Munich, 1911
Benjamin Britten, as is well known, was attracted to pubescent boys (his ideal was 13-year-olds, according to John Bridcut; aged between the ages of eight and 16, Philip Hensher notes), and lost interest when their voices broke.
Did he act on those urges? According to two books published by Faber & Faber (which also publishes Britten’s scores), Humphrey Carpenter’s Benjamin Britten: A Biography (2003) and Bridcut’s Britten’s Children (2006), he never sexually molested any. One of the boys, actor David Hemmings, denies that anything unseemly occurred, nor were any other Britten favourites he talked to molested.
However, others – Adam Mars-Jones, Bob Shingleton, Georg Predota – remain dubious. Britten himself allegedly said: “If I would not have buggered boys, I would have missed one of life’s greatest pleasures.”
That unwholesome desire for young boys (whether acted upon or not) is a troubling undercurrent to Britten’s last and most personal opera, Death in Venice, an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella about an old man’s infatuation with a teenage boy. (Mann based the novella on his own attraction to a Polish boy in Venice.)
A famous author, Aschenbach, suffering from writer’s block, mopes about Venice, complaining about his fellow tourists and the gondoliers, and drooling over 14-year-old Tadzio. Then he dies of cholera.
As a review on IMDB puts it: “I can understand why Britten empathised with this story of a dirty old man following an adolescent boy around Venice, but it is a theme that probably does not have universal appeal.”
Leaving aside (for a moment) the unsavoury subject matter, Death in Venice is an arthouse opera; if Traviata and Bohème are at one end of a scale, this is at the very opposite end. The pace is glacial; the attitude introspective; the score austere and introverted. But the opera has its admirers. Edward Greenfield (The Guardian) considered it “one of the richest and deepest of operatic character-studies”.
Written for Britten’s partner Peter Pears, it is almost a solo piece for tenor and orchestra. (Pears himself called it “an evil opera”.) Aschenbach is the only character, and sings almost constantly; largely recitative, much of it his meditations on Venice and beauty. Tadzio (played by a dancer) is silent.
After the prologue (some nasty piccolos and clarinets), much of the music is sparse and elusive, with tinkling solo piano arpeggios. But there are some ravishing things in it; there are orchestral passages that shimmer: the evocation of Venice in the overture, or the Balinese-style music that accompanies both the games of Apollo (end of Act I), where Aschenbach sits on a beach watching (perving on) Tadzio and his mates frolic, and the death of Aschenbach (end of Act II).
Greek themes run through Mann and Britten – no doubt harking back to certain Athenian practices: pederasty – relations between older men (erastes) and younger boys (eromenos) – was institutionalised and idealised. Tadzio appears to Aschenbach as the embodiment of Eros. Aschenbach is a man of order and discipline, who succumbs to strange passions and urges; the Apollonian and Dionysian forces wage war within him. (They usually do in post-Nietzschean German literature.) The gods (a baritone Dionysus and a countertenor Apollo) appear to Aschenbach in a dream sequence, whose music quotes the First Delphic Hymn. A ferryman is compared to Charon. The seven baritone characters are Hermes, the psychopomp, showing the dead the way to the underworld, and luring Aschenbach to destruction: desire leads to death. Aschenbach ponders Plato’s Dialogues. On another level, Aschenbach’s infatuation is the artist’s search for the ideal of Beauty.
Study in obsession or exploration of pederasty, Death in Venice is rather queasy.
Recordings
Listen to: Original cast recording, conducted by Steuart Bedford; London, 1974. Decca.
Watch: Robert Gard (Aschenbach), John Shirley-Quirk (various), James Bowman (the Voice of Apollo), and Vincent Redman (Tadzio), directed by Tony Palmer, 1981.
Works consulted
- Martin Cooper, “New Britten opera has sense of atmosphere”, The Daily Telegraph, 18th June 1973
- Edward Greenfield, “Britten’s Death in Venice”, The Guardian, 18th June 1973
- Peter Heyworth, “Road to the abyss,” The Observer, 24th June 1973
- Edward Greenfield, “Ascent of Mann”, The Guardian, 26th June 1973
- John Matthias, “The Haunting of Benjamin Britten”, Electronic Book Review, 1 January 1999
- Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography, London: Faber & Faber, 2003
- John Bridcut, Britten’s Children, London: Faber & Faber, 2006
- Adam Mars-Jones, “Lie back and think of Britten”, The Guardian, 4 June 2006
- Bob Shingleton, “Benjamin Britten’s relationship with children”, On an Overgrown Path, 4 June 2006
- John Bridcut, The Faber Pocket Guide to Britten, London: Faber & Faber, 2010
- Bob Shingleton, “Storm clouds gather over Aldeburgh”, On an Overgrown Path, 2 November 2012
- Philip Hensher, “Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century by Paul Kildea – review”, The Guardian, 7 February 2013
- Georg Predota, “The Adventures of Benji Britten and the Boys”, Interlude, 28 August 2013
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